


the people you love become ghosts inside of you

by andthentheybow



Category: Marrowbone (2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Second Chances, it's just fairbairn dw, more comfort tbh, sometimes a family is four siblings and their allie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 07:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25347136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthentheybow/pseuds/andthentheybow
Summary: and like this you keep them aliveor, jack gets a second chance to keep his family together
Relationships: Jack Marrowbone & Jane Marrowbone & Billy Marrowbone & Sam Marrowbone & Allie, Jack Marrowbone/Allie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	the people you love become ghosts inside of you

**Author's Note:**

> listen, i watched this movie yesterday and lemme tell you, it fucked me up. i'm not expecting anything to come of this story but if you need closure like me, hopefully this helps. title is a quote from robert montgomery.
> 
> tw for canon-typical violence & referenced underage/non-con because of how heavily implied it was in the movie that sam is jane's kid  
> characters, etc are not mine

We are one.

It was the mantra the three of them repeated, over and over again. If he hurt one of them, he hurt all of them. They helped each other up, they hid together, they ran together. Jane patched up the boys’ wounds and they held her while she cried. The fifth day in a row that Billy and Jack find Jane retching in the bathroom with their mother holding her hair back is the day that Jack decides to do something.

Simon Fairbairn doesn’t stay in prison for long.

The very second that they find out he’s escaped is the second that they leave. They barely have time to pack their bags, throwing everything together, running. Sam has very, very little memory of Fairbairn, just enough to know he’s a bad man. The other three have too many memories to count.

Their mother tells them to leave the memories behind.

They do their best.

But they all still have trouble sleeping through the night. Sam dreams of a faceless figure chasing after him, wakes up screaming and crawling into bed with their mother or Jane. Billy wakes up silently, fists clenched, and the only way the others know he gets them too is the dark circles under his eyes every other morning. Jane dreams of his hands, all over her, her brothers stepping in front of his fists, wakes up sweaty and silently checks on all of them to make sure they’re still alive. Jack sees a knife and a hot flash of blood and wakes up with a gasp, goes to the person he saw die that evening, sits awake at the foot of their bed until morning.

They meet Allie, and all of them fall in love with her their own way, a little bit. Jane finally has a close female friend her age, and they talk about things that the boys avoid, and as soon as the boys are gone they talk about actual things. Billy finally has someone that keeps up with him when he runs, enjoys going on little adventures through all the areas of nature around the Marrowbone estate. Sam sees her as another big sister, listens to her stories with undisguised glee. Jack kisses her for the first time and feels his heart explode.

Their mother dies.

They have one year. One year to make it before Jack can legally take care of them. Time marches on. Allie gets a job at the library she so loves, and Jack visits town once a week. They homeschool Sam, because reading is the only thing he has to do when Jane is baking and Billy is out hunting and Jack is in town.

They don’t talk about the box in their mother’s dresser. They don’t talk about how quiet the house sounds sometimes, the way they all still wake up in the night, the way that first Sam and Jane started sleeping together, and then Jack dragged his mattress into their room, and then Billy would sneak in and sleep on the floor once they had all fallen asleep before Jane cornered him and told him to just drag his bed in, too. They create the fortress as a place to hide from the nightmares, a grand palace where they can truly be free.

The day their father comes is the brightest day of the summer.

Jane is the one that sees him first, a bullet through the window and a moment of frozen recognition before he lowers the gun and she screams for Jack. She screams for Jack, for Billy, for Sam, and they all slam into each other before she cries out that he’s here and Jack is shoving them up the stairs to the attic. He says that this is between their father and him, him alone, and he locks them in.

We are one echoes through his head as he grabs the box and goes outside.

The meeting goes horribly, because of course Fairbairn doesn’t just want the money, he wants revenge. On all of them. He sends Jack plummeting over the side of the cliff and then he goes for the house.

In one universe, Jack doesn’t wake up in time. He gets back to the house with his father in the attic and his siblings dead, and he lives the rest of his life in a perpetual nightmare of which there is no recovery.

In another universe, he does wake up. He wakes up and he limps his way up the hill, grabs the gun, makes it to the house in time to see their father getting onto the roof.

He’s going up the stairs, hearing Sam’s muffled whimpers, when he realizes that he has to time it right. If he gets them out before Fairbairn drops into the attic, their father will just go back down and kill them in the house. If he gets it right, they’ll be safe.

He gets it right.

He’s got the key in the door when he hears Jane scream for Billy to kill him, kill him, and he throws the door open and grabs her by the arm. She and Sam both scream and he pulls them down the stairs, and Billy turns back just as Fairbairn hits the ground.

Jane and Jack are both still screaming, Fairbairn charges, and Billy throws the pipe and runs. He pulls the door shut behind him and goes tumbling down the stairs, barrelling right into Jane and Sam. Jack locks the door, Fairbairn slams up against it, screaming, and all four children catch their breath.

Jane’s hand is still over Sam’s eyes.

Jack pulls the keys out of the door and back onto his belt. He turns back, sees his three younger siblings at the bottom of the stairs. Jane is clutching Sam tight to her chest, Billy has his arms wrapped around both of them. His arm looks as if it’s been clawed at- their father must have caught him on the way out.

Jack’s head injury catches up to him and he falls down the stairs.

When he wakes, it’s to the soft sounds of his siblings and the screaming of his father muffled by the Beach Boys being blasted from a record player. They’re in the fortress, safe. Jane is reading to Sam. Billy is sitting in front of all three of them, holding the gun. Jack reaches up to his forehead to find a neat bandage over the wound.

When Sam goes to sleep, all of them still in their fortress of blankets and pillows and safety, the eldest three come up with a plan.

They’ll tell Sam that it’s a ghost. It’s a ghost that attacked them, and it’s a ghost that’s screaming through their walls. The great mirror that Fairbairn cracked in frustration when he couldn’t get into the attic through the door will be covered with the tarp. It’s a product of a ghost, after all, a ghost that tried to get out through the mirror. They’ll take all the mirrors out of the house and hide them in Rose’s room, with the box, both to help with the ghost in the mirrors bit and for themselves. So Jack doesn’t look and see the wound scarring over on his head. So Billy doesn’t look and see the marks on his arm, the haunted look in his eyes. So Jane doesn’t look and see herself, as she is, her scars mental rather than physical.

Sam won’t let anyone leave the fortress. The next time he’s asleep, secure in Jane’s arms, Jack and Billy search the house and yard for bricks, any they can find. Jane slips out of the fortress and helps them brick up the attic door, Fairbairn screaming and pounding the whole time. Sam never knows any better. When he notices, they tell him it’s to keep the ghost inside.

Billy takes the gun and climbs onto the roof, covers the chimney with wood and ties it down hard. He thinks he catches a glimpse of his father’s eyes at one point. He refuses to leave the fortress for two days.

After a week, they hesitantly leave the fortress, all four of them clutching each other’s arms, backs, anywhere they can reach. As if on cue, the screaming starts.

After a few weeks, the screaming stops.

They think they’re safe.

They’re wrong.

With the gun, Billy is better able to hunt. With extra meat, they use more of their food for Jane’s cakes. Jack buys more bullets, brings more books home. They operate on a steady system, careful with their volume, lest they wake the ghost.

They all pretend the creaking walls don’t get to them.

One day, Jack goes into town and returns white and shaking. They all argue about what they’re going to do, but they come up with a plan. Jane practices forging their mother’s signature for nearly six hours straight. Jack tells Billy where the box is and, despite Jane’s protests of it being blood money, Billy retrieves the box. He slips Jack’s knife into his pocket on the way back, doesn’t say a word about it to anyone.

Tom arrives the next day. Jane hides in their mother’s room. Sam hides in the fortress. Billy waits near the attic with the gun.

Jack has the lemonade ready.

They pull it off with only minor complications. Everything is in working order.

The ghost wakes up.

Jack’s blackouts start getting worse. There are fewer noises in the walls, more noises from the attic. Sam sees the ghost in a mirror in their mother’s room. It was a lie, the brothers say, made up so that Sam didn’t need to grow up knowing his older siblings technically murdered their abusive father. Jane says it’s because they used his money. It’s impossible, Billy and Jack reason. He’s long starved, long dead. Jane insists that they still walled a man up in their attic, why wouldn’t he want revenge, even as a ghost?

It’s still a horror movie, after all.

They begin to believe that it really is a ghost. Billy brings the box up to the roof, drops it down the chimney. There’s no sound. He watches the box for a moment before he boards the chimney back up.

It doesn’t work.

Jack and Billy argue. Jane tries to calm them both down. The ghost gets louder.

Jane’s reaching for Scoundrel the raccoon when she feels a hand touch hers. She scrubs her hand raw and red before screaming into her pillow. Downstairs, Tom has figured them out. Blackmails them. Jack tells them that under no uncertain terms are they to go into the attic. Sam asks Jane what she’s done to her hand. She tells them the damn raccoon got at it.

Billy drops down the chimney. Grabs the box. Sees his father’s eyes, his father’s malnourished frame as Fairbairn rushes at him. He nearly dies, gets stabbed in the side, manages to cut the rope with the knife still in the pocket of his overalls and gets to the top of the chimney. The box is still down there. With their still-living father.

He may as well be a ghost in their walls, watching through their mirrors. They look into their own eyes and see him. Because they are his children. Which means they won’t go down without a fight.

Billy limps into the bathroom, yelling for Jane. She gasps when she sees him. He grabs her hand and she flinches, confirming both of their suspicions. The worst has happened.

Sam sits in silence as Jane stitches the wound in Billy’s side. Jack hears Billy’s sounds of pain, Jane’s soothing words. He pokes his head in, asks what’s going on. He has a seizure and blacks out before the argument can get too intense, and that’s when the youngest three decide that they need to tell Allie. About all of it. About their mother dying, their father in their attic, Jack’s head wound and likely brain injury getting worse and worse. Jane flashes to Allie to meet the next morning. Billy brings the book that all of them have worked painstakingly over to the skull rocks. No one goes into town to meet Tom.

They don’t expect Tom to come to them.

They can hear him outside, poking around, yelling for someone to get there with his money. Jane and Billy drag a still-unconscious Jack to the fortress, Sam crying as he follows them. Billy clutches the gun tight, realizes the knife is up in the attic, realizes that’s exactly where Tom is going.

They don’t do anything to stop him.

They can hear Tom with the sledgehammer, Tom destroying the wall they built between themselves and the man they call father, call ghost. Tom yelling in shock, and then silence.

Jane pulls Jack up to her chest, as if holding him will shield him. Sam curls into Jack’s side, pressed against Jane. Billy wraps his arms around all of them, holding the gun in front of them.

There is silence.

Jane and Billy begin arguing in hushed tones, over what they should do. Billy wants to go, to find their father, to kill him. Jane reminds him that last time, he was the one nearly getting killed, not their father. Billy argues that he has the gun now. Jane tells him that they need to stay in the fortress. Jack’s orders. They’re hidden. They can shoot at him if he comes. Sam begs them to stop fighting.

Allie enters the fortress.

She seems surprised, almost, to see all four of them there. As if in another life, she would have just seen Jack, talking to himself, his siblings dead for the past six months. She gets over her shock quickly, begs them to help.

They’re all too afraid. They know what their father could do, would do, will do.

Allie goes alone.

She finds Tom in the attic, bleeding out from a stab wound to the neck. Fairbairn slams the door closed.

She throws the box at him. Asks him why he’s hiding. He’s just a ghost in these walls, after all. Tried to kill his children. Couldn’t.

The Marrowbones hear Allie’s words.

Jack wakes up.

Fairbairn’s got her on the ground, strangling her, when Billy kicks the door open. Jane screams for him to stop, to face them, they’re the ones he wants to kill. He looks up, turns back. Jack takes the shot. The bullet with Dad carved into it hits him square in the forehead. Sam is the first to rush over, to help Allie up, as the eldest three look at their father’s corpse. A tangible ghost.

All four of them were there to kill him. To save her. They are one.

Allie knows that she will do anything for these siblings. Who have suffered so much, who deserve a second chance more than anything in the world. They bury Simon Fairbairn’s body far away from Rose Marrowbone. None of them think he deserves a burial, except maybe Jane, if only to keep the ghosts away. He has no marker on his grave. No proof that he lived except for prison records and newspaper clippings and the four bright, beautiful children he left behind.

Allie, who has never liked Tom, but knows he didn’t deserve the end he got, helps Jack carry Tom’s body to his car, then to the road. She runs to town, sporting hand-shaped bruises on her neck, Jack just behind her. They make up a wild story about how Tom was driving Allie to the house, just to visit, when they were attacked. Tom was killed, Allie nearly, and Jack arrived just in time to scare the assailant off. They both describe a malnourished man with a wild beard and wilder eyes.

The town believes them.

Five months later, Jack turns twenty-one. A week after that, the four siblings put on their best clothes, walk into town, announce that their mother has died. They gave her a private funeral and buried her in the garden where she asked to be buried. The house is officially Jack’s, Jack is officially the legal guardian of his siblings. They will not be split up. They are one.

They don’t want to leave their mother’s body behind, but they want to leave the ghost. Briefly, while Allie is over for dinner one night, they tell her that they’re considering burning the house down.

Instead, they move.

They move out of Maine. They move out of the Marrowbone estate. They go to Chicago, where nobody knows them, where they can start over. Allie goes with them. The little town wasn’t the reason she stayed, Jack was. They all were.

Jack gets a job at the local grocer, rises quickly through the ranks until he becomes an assistant manager. He grows his hair long to hide the scar on his forehead, but brushes it out of his face when he’s at home. Jane gets a job at a bakery, making her signature cakes, and comes home covered in flour. Allie finds a job at a library, one much bigger than the one from their little town. She loves it more than anything, except maybe the Marrowbones. Billy gets into college, intelligent despite the lack of education. He makes friends, becomes popular, spreads his wings, but always comes home to them. They enlist Sam in a public school, let him get the education he deserves. Between the income of the three eldest, they’re able to send the two boys to school and pay for their housing and food and anything else they might need.

They all still wake up screaming.

Allie writes to her parents. Her parents send money. Allie enrolls in college, decides to study to become a psychiatrist. Mental illnesses are still looked down on, but she doesn’t care. They all have trauma. They’re going to get better. She’s certain of it.

Allie falls in love with all of them a little bit, in different ways. Sam treats her like another sister, bringing her home his tests from school with his high grades and wider smiles. Jane talks to her conspiratorially, like there’s only two of them in the world, best friends until death and probably longer. She and Billy go on runs through the park, make friends with kids and join their games. They take the car that Allie’s parents gave her and drive to remote locations to hike, bringing the other three when they find especially good locations. They make new memories, all five of them And she and Jack fall into bed at night, his siblings in the other room of their two-bedroom apartment, and smile at each other giddily, completely in love.

Sometimes, Allie looks at them and thinks of what might have been. If Fairbairn had gotten to the attic before Jack all those months ago. If Jack had never moved on. She thinks she still would have loved him. Have cared for him. No matter what. She usually leaves those thoughts in the dark parts of her mind, where she keeps the memory of Fairbairn’s hands around her neck. They all still wake up screaming, but less so. They go to therapy. They’re making new memories.

One day, standing in their little living room, Jack holds his hand out. Jane is the first to put her hand on top of his, then Sam, then Billy. Allie hovers back. They all look at her expectantly.

“Come on,” Jack says, the other three smiling at her- Jane with her wide beam, Sam’s missing front tooth, Billy’s kind half-smirk. Jack’s grin. Jack’s beautiful, beautiful grin. “You’re one of us now.”

And she repeats after them.

They are one.

Jack protects his siblings. Allie becomes one of them. He keeps his promise, to his mother and to himself, and he allows himself to be happy. They all allow themselves to get better. Most importantly, they all stay together. When there are challenges, the five of them repeat, like a mantra, together:

We are one.


End file.
